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Portrait

This is my entry for the Skill Building Challenge 25 at the Watts Atelier of the Arts, and the last month of the yearly Master Skill Building Challenge.
The subject was supposed to be something we are really looking forward to be doing in our career, and that would have been fantasy illustration for me. However, I felt like I did not have the necessary skills to compete yet, so I chose to portray my parents. Here follows the reference I used
After six long months, I feel like I did improve my skills a little bit, hopefully sign of an ascending path from now on.
Time to get back to the program, phew!

The most taxing challenge so far 😀 I had never tried. It was my first attempt at quicksketch, and I can ensure it really is as stressful as it seems! I burned out until the end, so I am glad the next phase will be on figure.
The above was a one hour quicksketch (one hour is still a fairly short time for a portrait). Follow two twenty minutes:

Then four 10 minutes:

And lastly eight (!) 5 minutes (!). These were by far the most challenging, I can barely find proportions in 5 minutes!

Poppe Totte kindly gave me the permission to publish his one hour quick sketch demo, where he shows his approach, thought process, and rendering method. For this demo he used a Conte 1710 charcoal pencil, and fairly smooth drawing paper (not smooth newsprint). Here follow his drawing and accompanying commentary

Step 1: simple block in and trying to find the planes. Think more Asaro than Reilly. I draw more with straight lines than trying to follow exact contour, time 15 minutes.

Step 2: Separate light from dark, I don’t do edgemarkings like Jeff but I define the shapes and try to find the largest forms. Notice how the darks are only half tones right now, time ca 15 minutes which is probably slow but I wanted to be accurate in order to impress you.

Step 3, go really dark on the darks, refine edges and shapes, also almost 15 mins which is really not that fast, but again, I went for accurateness.
I also didn’t start on the hair since it gets really easy to smear the whole drawing. Notice though that I sort of already have it in shapes and planes.

Step 3.5. Thiis is where the magic happens, smear out the darks and build up the halftone. Go lighter on the light parts but dont leave any white spots. This stage is only 2-3 minutes.

Last step, final rendering, I refine some of the halftones, going lighter and darker where needed. I use a cut hard eraser for the highlights. Fingers or a stump where needed. Approx time 15-20 mins.

This is my entry for the second month of the Master Skill Building Challenge at the Watts Atelier of the Arts.
It’s actually the very first complete portrait in charcoal I draw, and I admit I am satisfied enough with the result. It’s by no means perfect, of course. I could have pushed the darks a bit more, and the nose is definitely smaller than the original (heh…).
Overall though, it’s decent enough to participate this month’s challenge.